c. 157 a.d.: The early
followers of Christ create a symbol, the fish, to represent
their beliefs and communicate with one another in times of
persecution. The fish was an appropriate choice for several
reasons: fish was a daily meal for many in the agrarian economy
by the sea; Jesus culled several of his followers from the fishing
industry; he performed a miracle involving the multiplication of
fish; and he said to his disciples, "Come and follow me, and I will
make you fishers of men." The well-known Icthus, or "Christian
fish," was the abstraction of the fish that resulted: two opposing

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curved lines that transect each other at the end to form a rudimentary
outline of fish and tail. It also happened, by intelligent choice and
clever coincidence, that the word for "fish" was also a Greek
acronym wherein:

Iota = Iesous = Jesus

Chi = Christos = Christ

Theta = Theos = God

Upsilon = Huios = Son

Sigma = Soter = Savior

Thus, in symbol and word, the fish provided first-century
believers with an integrated media package that could be easily
explained and understood by any non-Christian of the time. When
Roman persecution of Christians required a more selective
display of the imagery, the Christians devised a means to
maintain the communication, the symbol, and the faith without
being fed to the lions: they dropped the text. Without the "icthus"
acronym to define the symbol's significance, the fish could mean
anything or nothing, an obvious advantage in a culture hostile to
certain beliefs. But to the Christians, the textless symbol still
signified silent rebellion against the ruling authorities. When a
Christian met someone else and began conversation, he could test
the ideological waters by casually drawing a curved line in the
sand. If the other party was also a Christian, he would indicate
as much by drawing an identical curved line in the opposite
direction, intersecting the original line to form the fish. Identity
established, the two would quickly erase the image and proceed
in the knowledge that each was safe from Roman persecution. The
fish was thus both the symbol of rebellion against authority and
safety to fellow believers for a band of evangelicals who knew
the power of an idea. Within three centuries, the faith signified
by the fish had transformed Rome into a Christian empire.

1997 a.d.: In an electronically accelerated culture, a symbol
can change the face of society in about one-sixteenth that time.
Enter the Swoosh ,
the most culturally ubiquitous icon in the country, and one that has
corporations lining up around the block to find out how to cash in
on the secret of Nike's branding action. In a world where technology,
entertainment, and design are converging, the story of the Swoosh
is by far the most fascinating case study of a systematic, integrated,
and insanely successful formula of market-to-consumer philosophy.

The simple version of the story is that a young Oregon design
student named Caroline Davidson was given $35 in 1971 to create
a logo for then-professor Phil Knight's idea of importing and marketing
improved Japanese running shoes. Nike's innovative product line
combined with aggressive marketing and brand positioning have
culminated in such a pervasive market presence that the mental link
between the image of the Swoosh and the word "Nike" has become
so culturally embedded that the company can afford to go textless
without losing the power of association. Or, as Nike puts it, there
was so much equity in their brand that they knew it couldn't hurt
to drop the word "Nike." Nike went to the textless format for U.S.
advertising on March 1, 1996 and globally in August of the same year.

Traditionally, it would be unthinkable to create a successful
ad campaign in which the company name does not appear on the
ads themselves. And when your total advertising budget comes to
more than $100 million per year, your faith in icons had better be
more than a leap in the dark. For their Times Square billboard
alone--a red Swoosh on a giant white clothing label--Nike pays
an estimated $50,000 per month. How do they do it?

First, consider the strength of the Swoosh as an icon. The
Swoosh is very simply two conjoined curved lines filled in with
a solid color. It is a simple shape that reproduces well at any size,
in any color, and on most any surface--three critical elements for
a corporate logo that will be reproduced at sizes from a quarter-inch
to 500 feet. It most frequently appears in one of the three most
visually arresting colors: black, red or white. While it is a textless
icon, it nevertheless "reads" left to right, just the direction you
would read the word "Nike," and the reading direction of most
global languages. Consider also the aural sound of the word
"Swoosh." According to various Nike ads, it is the last sound you
hear before coming in second place, the sound of a basketball
hitting nothing but net, and is also an onomatopoeic mirror of
the icon's visual stroke. Reading left to right, the symbol itself
seems to actually say "swoosh" as you look at it.

But by being textless, it transcends language and allows the
viewer to understand it whether or not they speak English (or Greek.)
With literacy on the decline, cultural pluralism on the rise, and
corporations producing more and more globally exported products,
a communication medium that transcends language will always
communicate more efficiently than one that is bogged down in
actual words. As such, an easily interpreted single-image icon
can be "read" much more quickly than written words, even the
written word "Nike." In the age of remote controls and channel-
and web-surfing, this is a critical consideration because it allows
the corporation to imprint its advertising message into the mind
of the viewer faster than he can change the channel. As such, the
Swoosh is the perfect corporate icon for the post-literate global village.

By having an image that isn't immediately defined by a word or
set of words next to it, the textless icon also offers an element
of mystery, thereby drawing attention to itself. In a visually
accelerated and hyperstimulated culture, you don't get the viewer's
attention by screaming loudest; you get it by whispering. This is
why so many other recent ad campaigns are using the stealth
approach. A billboard asks, "Have you seen it?" and you don't
find out for two weeks that "it" refers to a new Nissan. Another
commands, "Dare to take a leap of faith" and two weeks later you
discover that it is Avon cosmetics, not Kierkegaard, that is being
promoted. But in all cases the original ad gets your attention and
guarantees that you'll be watching in the future to answer your
intrinsic curiosity: New what? Faith in what?

Through their allusive power, these ads suggest that the subject
they address will be of vital concern with words of utmost gravity
and importance to your life. And this is precisely the effect that
a textless icon has: it whispers a suggestion, an association, and
another set of mental images that are provoked by the pictures
you've seen surrounding the icon. Nike doesn't have to make a
single claim about any particular product: if a picture is worth a
thousand words, then imagine how much an icon associated with
hundreds of pictures is worth. By going textless, Nike has co-opted
the right to fill in the blank of your associative mind with whatever
images it deems appropriate.

With the invention of the printing press, according to Umberto
Eco, the alphabet triumphed over the icon. But in an overstimulated
electronic culture, the chief problem is what advertisers call
"clutter" or "chatter"--too many words, too much redundancy, too
many competing messages vying for your limited attention span at
all moments of the day. Add to this mix the rise of illiteracy and
an increasingly multicultural world, and you have a real communications
problem. A hyperlinked global economy requires a single global
communications medium, and it is simply easier and more efficient
to teach everyone a few common symbols than to teach the majority
of non-English speakers a brand new language.

The necessary result, though unfortunate, is that language
itself is contracting, contorting, and ultimately, disappearing,
only to be replaced by icons. From the rock star formerly known
as Prince to e-mail "smileys" to the nafta-induced symbolic
laundry labels, the world and the words we use to describe it
are being rapidly reduced to a common set of universal hieroglyphs.
Leading the charge, as one would expect, are the organizations who
stand to make the most money: multinational corporations. After
watching Nike do it, several companies have decided to go textless
on the strength or the age of their icon.

One such is Mercedes-Benz, whose icon is not only a star within
a circle (a three-in-one image from time immemorial), but also
a symbol that is easily confused with the peace sign (an association
that can only help Mercedes). One Mercedes' print ad opens by
mentioning three symbols, starting with the peace symbol and
says, "Glimpse at them for a split second, and you know exactly
what they mean. Because right behind every powerful icon lies
a powerful idea." Split-second glimpse, exact meaning, powerful
idea: precisely the definition of a global communications medium
for an accelerated culture.

Mercedes' textless campaign opened on television with
image after image representing qualities of power, prestige,
beauty, excellence, and fun, culminating with the image of one
all-encapsulating symbol: the Mercedes tristar logo. "Can a symbol
stand for all these things?" asks the voiceover, "It depends on
the symbol." Indeed it does.

Pepsi's new textless symbol does not need any verbal justification
because it already so clearly imitates the yin-yang symbol.
In fact, a close look reveals it to be almost identical to the
Korean national flag, which is itself a stylized yin-yang symbol
in red, white, and blue.

On the other hand, a company whose symbol is no more meaningful
than its own stated significance must launch icon-education
ads before relying on an icon campaign. Thus a recent Heineken ad
in which their red star icon is described tentatively, hoping you'll
bite when it says, "It's an icon. It represents truth, honesty,
authenticity, and integrity. There are many icons. Musicians,
politicians, even actors. An icon can stir the emotions, it can
give you something to relate to and identify with. So, just in
case you were wondering, that's what it is. But then again, it
could just be a red star on a green background."

But no company has relied on icons to move product more
than Nike. While the effectiveness of the Swoosh obviously
derives from its repeated association with images of a Nietzschean
ethic of self-assertion, its persuasiveness is derived primarily
from the symbol's intrinsic psychological power. Look again at
that Swoosh: Have you seen it somewhere before?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? Nike's symbol is not, as
their public relations department recently told me, "just an
abstract symbol representing speed and motion." Nor is it, as
their web site now claims, simply representative of the wings
of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. These may be the stated
or intended associations, but they are not the actual effect.
Most people, if you ask them what they like about the Swoosh
symbol, will simply say that it is pleasurable to look at; they
cannot articulate their reasons, but they enjoy the organic sweep
of the lines, the single clean stroke in a single color that makes
them feel good.

Look at it one more time: The Swoosh is a big,
fat, stylized check mark. Or, seen another way, it is two check
marks on top of each other, conjoined at both ends and filled in
with a solid color. As a check mark, the Swoosh communicates at
a subconscious level, because we've all been recipients of check
marks for twelve or more years of school. The check mark is what
we receive as a symbol of a correct answer on a test, a good point
in an essay, or presence (as opposed to absence) on a class participation
list. It signifies success, achievement, proper answers and attitudes
for the one thing we all do daily during our most formative years. It
is a wordless, imagistic representation of the success and affirmation
that we all crave. The Swoosh is the visual equivalent of a smell you
haven't experienced since childhood--it triggers your memory and
returns you instantly to a simpler, more innocent time, when you
felt younger, healthier, and more invincible. By the time our schooling
is complete, our mind's eye is so firmly convinced of the positive
psychic and emotional connection between achievement and the check
mark that the Nike symbol is guaranteed to resonate within us and
make us feel good about ourselves, whether we recognize it as a
check mark or not.

Thus, it is Nike's product, not their icon, that is arbitrary. In truth,
Nike could use the Swoosh to sell anything from pianos to pizza, but
the check mark works best in the sports and fitness realm because
sport is the one area where a person can achieve incredible success
in the world without doing well in school. Think about it: who is most
distant from the culture of academic achievement in our country? The
underclass. Nike products offer a wearable check mark of approval
and self-esteem for inner-city children who've grown up surrounded
with violence, abuse, and misery. It provides an athletic way out for
underachieving students looking for a ticket to freedom and success.
Nike works because their product, icon, and target market are all
seamlessly integrated into one ideology of consumer desire and
corporate gratification.

But Nike also appeals to a much larger demographic. What Nike
is really selling, of course, is not shoes or athletic clothes, but the
mythology of sport, and the surrounding philosophy of youth, health,
fitness, and the sort of in-your-face rebellion that appeals to the
adolescent in all of us. Given the times, any company would have
been successful with a "Just Do It" campaign created just after
Nancy Reagan told kids to "Just Say No." Again, consider the universal
applicability of the slogan--"Just Do It" could be the tagline for
everything from condoms to Cheerios--which only proves that
propaganda comes before product in moving the masses to market.
We agree with the sentiment of "Just Do It" long before we're
told what the sentiment is attached to, much less what "it" signifies.
But sport works best because sport is the only real religion of a
multicultural society. It is the only thing that we can safely believe
in fanatically without hurting or limiting the freedoms of others. In
any other context, the label "fanatic" would be pejorative. Harper's
Index points out that there are only five days in the calendar year
when there is no major national sporting event taking place. The
only other cultural institution that can make an equivalent claim
is the Catholic Church. But when was the last time you skipped the
game to attend Mass?

The combined power of such an integrated market, product, and
advertising strategy has made the symbolic value of the Swoosh
reach beyond mere brand identity. The Swoosh is literally an icon
of identification for the true believer, a symbol so powerful that
its followers now wear it not only on their shoes, shirts, and hats,
but faded into their haircuts and, in the ultimate instance of
product branding, tattooed into their skin. When the Heaven's Gate
crew went from this realm to the next, there was a beautiful logic
in choosing identical Nike footwear, a model called "Sustain." In
Donald Katz's 1994 book, Just Do It, one Nike employee sums
up loyalty to the company by saying, "It's a cult, but it's a great cult."

In a market economy freed from a common cultural creed, the
corporation's primary obligation is to yield higher and higher profit
margins. Consequently, the corporation must use whatever means are
at its disposal to increase revenues. Thus you will get less product
for the same price, value measurements of volume instead of weight,
and a fair market price only if you buy in bulk. Thus you will get most
first-world products produced in third-world countries, along with the
litany of stories of worker abuse for the sake of higher production
rates. And thus you will get, from almost all large corporations, a
philosophy in tandem with their product and be sold the two as
inseparably linked. For Nike, promoting their philosophy (or as they
put it, "allowing customers to experience the Nike brand"), has become
such a necessity to continually increasing profits that the ante has
been upped to the level where the aggressive appropriation of history
and culture for their own purposes has become an art form. In this
context, Nike seems to have decided that any and all techniques of
mass persuasion are fair game.

Almost all advertising is a form of propaganda, and Nike's
advertising is particularly brilliant propaganda. But brilliant
doesn't necessarily mean original; in many instances, Nike's
marketing strategies appear to be lifted straight out of the
propaganda techniques of Nazi Germany. The Aryan ideals of
strength, health, and youth parallel Nike's own cult of athleticism,
and the Ubermensch mentality promoted by the Nike Olympic ad that
states, "You don't win silver. You lose gold." Andrew Levy, a professor
at Butler University in Indianapolis, points out that a statue of the
Greek goddess Nike was a centerpiece of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Levy and the wide-eyed cynics at Suck.com have also noticed that
the long banners of Niketown, the red, white, and black color scheme,
the textless icon on flags and armbands, and even some of the individual
iconography, is eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Fortune
magazine recently featured Nike ceo Phil Knight on its cover, highlighting
the fact that he has returned an incredible average of 47 percent to
his investors in the past ten years. The secret to his success, according
to the cover story? "Break the rules." Nazi, Nike; Swastika, Swooshtika.

It's an absurd comparison, but the similarity doesn't end with the
coincidental (and surely unintentional) alliteration of the words.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler describes propaganda as the
art of "understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and
finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the
attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses." Compare
that with the number four goal on Nike's corporate mission
statement: "To nurture relevant emotional ties between the Nike
brand and consumer segments." Can you imagine a "psychologically
correct form" more exquisite than the Swoosh? Hitler: "A slogan
must be presented from different angles, but the end of all remarks
must always and imputably be the slogan itself" Seen any Nike ads
where that wasn't the case?

You can bet that Nike does not appreciate these comparisons.
Nike's PR spokesperson reacted to professor Levy with these words:
"In my view, the guy who wrote the article has an overactive
imagination. He's intellectualizing to make an extreme point. I talked
to the designer who came up with that emblem. He said (italics mine)
he was going for the type of strong graphics used by the Germans
and Swiss in the early and middle part of the century." Joseph
Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, also had an overactive
imagination by all accounts (he did, after all, have a Ph.D. in romantic
literature). Goebbels' reaction to being asked about losing World War
II: "We didn't lose, we instilled our ideals into the hearts and minds
of our conquerors."

The power of symbols should not be underestimated. By being
textless, these corporate symbols operate at a level beneath the
radar screen of rational language, and the power they wield can be
the same power that corrupts. Advertising that relies on methods of
propaganda has the power to grab you and take you somewhere whether
you want to go there or not, and in a lumpy universe, it matters where
you're going.

Language is the mediator between our minds and the world, and
is the essential thing that defines us as rational creatures. By going
textless, Nike and other corporations have succeeded in performing
partial lobotomies on our brains. Ringing the Swoosh bell they have
bypassed our minds altogether, gone straight to our hearts and, in
the process, made us salivate like dogs for their product. Like Pavlov's
bell to his dogs, the Swoosh is a stimulus in our environment that we
react to by unconscious conditioned response--to the tune of two
hundred pairs of Nikes a minute (the 1994 figure, the current one is
much higher). The problem is not the shoes, the problem is that what
allegedly distinguishes us from the animals is our ability to not react to
environmental stimuli with unconscious conditioned responses. By not
giving us a single word to wrap our minds around, textless ads offer
us very little choice but to follow our feelings. And, in Nike's case,
you have to acknowledge the irony of the bell: the check mark is,
after all, the primary symbol that signifies the achievement of a
rational, linguistically capable mind.

If sport is the religion of the modern age, then Nike has
successfully become the official church. It is a church whose
icon serves as an allegory that formulates salvation in a special
parabolical and symbolic language. The Swoosh is a window on
the border between this world and the other, between your existing
self (you overweight slob) and your Nike self (you god of fitness),
where salvation is the attainment of the athletic Nietzschean ideal:
no fear, no mercy, no second-place. The Swoosh is a true religious icon
in that it serves as a representation of the reality and as a participant in the reality; you do after all, have to wear something to attain this special salvation, so why not something emblazoned with that Swoosh?

How powerful is the zeal spawned by the cult of Nike? So powerful
that we kill for it. Since 1991, five Americans have been shot to death
for the Nikes on their feet. Lt. Thomas Malacek, the
officer handling one of the cases, said, "It's becoming a growing problem, because apparently these items have a lot more identity value than in the past.''

Well, you say, the kids are crazy these days, and there's a whole slew
of other factors involved in each one of these deaths: Poverty. Race.
Violence. Family breakdown. Sure, but it still begs the question: How
come no one's ever died for a pair of Reeboks?

Or Adidas?

Or Filas?

___________________

Reprinted with permission from re:generation quarterly and Read Mercer Schuchardt. To subscribe to re:generation quarterly, call 800-783-4903. The purpose of re:generation quarterly is to equip the emerging generation to transform their world by providing commentary, critique, and celebration of communities and contemporary culture.

Read Mercer Schuchardt is the founder of Cleave, The Counter Agency. He can be reached at read@cleave.com.